Classical liberalism prioritized political freedom over economic liberty.

Evidence

The Road to Serfdom was, as noted earlier, a political, not an economic, tract. Hayek was a professor of economics, but in constructing his argument he made no use of economic reasoning even in its broadest sense. The classical liberalism that the book invoked promoted above all a conception of political freedom, underpinned by a parallel, but weaker, conception of economic liberty. Free markets, in this classical view, were a corollary of political liberty, and not the other way around. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 391

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the classical-liberal ordering: free markets as corollary of political liberty, not its foundation.
• XREF: Connects to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom reading and to the reader’s interest in how neoliberal networks reordered this hierarchy. — connects to: Political freedom is impossible without economic freedom — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 407; British neoliberalism inverted the traditional priority of political over economic freedom — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 154; Classical liberalism originally tolerated state intervention and mercantilism. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2088 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 391

Broader Connections

• Classical liberalism originally tolerated state intervention and mercantilism. #qualifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2088
• Classical political economy presumed political sovereignty over economic activity. #corroborates (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 186